Groupe SBC | Agile Transformation

Agility is a state of mind

Becoming agile is very much like learning to ride a bicycle. Unfortunately, like for bicycle, reading a book about it, participating in courses and webinars won’t make much difference. You start to get it when you start practicing. In other words, unless you get on the bike, you’ll never quite understand and even less become good at it. And just like riding a bike, at first you need to believe you can do it, prepared to fall a few times and adjust your technique. Fortunately you don’t have to do this on your own. We can help you!

Learn the basics

We’ll take the time to understand where you are starting from and make sure the basic tenets of agility are understood. But most importantly, we’ll help you get on the bike and start practicing.

Practice makes perfect

Like Vince Lombardi once said: “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” We’ll coach and assist you through the practice process to make sure it is perfect!

Off to the races

Now that you have mastered agility, the real work begins! Regardless of the type of races you are engaged into, you’ll want to keep track of your performances and improve them in order to win the races every time!

Where do we start?

Agile business transformation is a paradigm shift. However, transforming a business into an agile enterprise does not mean implementing agile teams everywhere and completely getting rid of traditional operations. You need to find the appropriate balance, the appropriate rate of transformation and there needs to be an interesting payoff. However, it invariably needs to start from the top and it is critical that leadership team embrace agile principles.

Agile Values - Based on the Agile Manifesto*

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working products and services over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Agile Principles - Based on the Agile Manifesto*

– Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable products and services.

– Welcome changing requirements, even late in the development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

– Deliver working products and services iterations frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

– Business people, engineers and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

– Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

– The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

– Working products and services are the primary measure of progress. Agile processes promote sustainable development.

– The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

– Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.

– The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

– At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.

The right conditions

There are plenty of misconceptions about agile but the one we come across the most has to do with chaos and a form of anarchy where people do whatever they want whenever they want. No wonder, executives teams are hesitant. The misconceptions usually originate from a misunderstanding of what is enterprise agility, where and how it can be applied.

For a successful agile transformation, you need the right conditions. You also need to understand how agility works and evaluate where agile make sense. There are favorable and unfavorable conditions for successful agile implementation. For example, if the impact of mistakes could result in catastrophic consequences, that part of the business or business process is probably not suited for agile. On the other hand, if your customers needs and preferences change frequently, agility probably need to be seriously considered and necessary business processes adjusted.

We have walked this path before, in many different industries. We can help you with your agile business transformation.

Our Approach

EVALUATE

First we will carefully analyse the current situation and where you are at in terms of agility. We then present you with our recommendations.

design

We then design the next steps together. We select the appropriate framework, the areas of the business we want to transform and a high level timeline.

Implement

If we need to train and level set people, we will do that first. Then we’ll make sure the necessary tools are in place and available before the we launch.

Monitor

Once we are up and running, it is important to monitor the performances and adjust where necessary. The KPIs that we will have put in place will help us.